KRAKOW, Poland — As the world prepared to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on Monday, two factors were on the minds of Jewish community leaders near the former Nazi death camp for the annual commemoration: The rise in antisemitism around the world following the events of October 7, 2023, and the impending reality that the last survivors will not be alive much longer.
In Krakow, about an hour’s drive from Auschwitz, 600 people from around the world, including 17 Holocaust survivors, gathered Sunday night at a reception organized by the World Jewish Congress (WJC), a day ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Top Jewish leaders, philanthropists, activists and community leaders discussed matters of the Jewish future in an atmosphere filled with vibrancy and life, commemorating the lives of a dwindling number of survivors, of whom virtually none will likely be alive for the 90th anniversary in a decade.
Only fifty survivors are scheduled to attend this year’s official ceremony, compared to 300 a decade ago, the ceremony’s organizers have said. Some 3,000 people, including world leaders and dignitaries from around the world, are expected to attend the event.
WJC president Ronald Lauder, who also serves as Chair of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation, thanked the survivors in the room for continuing to tell their stories and keep the lessons of the Holocaust alive.
“None of us can know the pain that you have carried with you for the past 80 years,” Lauder said. “But you stepped up to the responsibility that was thrust upon you, and for that, we are eternally grateful.”
Lauder addressed the rising scourge of anti-Jewish hatred around the world, particularly since the war in Gaza was sparked by the Hamas terror group’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, in which some 1,200 people were killed in Israel and 251 were taken hostage.
“Many of us thought antisemitism had been extinguished forever,” Lauder said. “But now, 80 years after the war, that ages-old virus has come back to infect the world once again. That is precisely the reason why the lives of the survivors and the lessons of this terrible place are so vitally important today.”
A reception in Krakow marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, January 26, 2025 (Zev Stub/Times of Israel)
Auschwitz survivor Michael Bornstein and his daughter, Debbie Holinstat, touched on several unique aspects of this year’s ceremony.
“A lot has changed since I was here five years ago for the 75th anniversary,” Bornstein said. “Back then, there were 120 survivors in the room, and now there are 17. Five years ago, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was sitting right there at the center, at a table across from us. Tonight, his country is at war.
Five years ago, I could have never guessed that my college-age grandchildren would see harassment and hate on their campuses. Now, they do. Five years ago, Israel was at peace. Tonight, there are still 90 hostages being held by Palestinian terrorists.”
Bornstein described his journey as a four-year-old from his hometown in Zarki, Poland to the Pionki labor camp and then to Auschwitz, where he was put into a children’s bunk and where his father and brother were killed. Eventually, Bornstein’s mother snuck him into the women’s barracks, where he would hide under a pile of straw while the women went out to work every day.
“My memories have slipped with age, but I still remember the foul, disgusting smell of burning bodies,” he said. “I remember Nazis shouting at me in German, I remember missing my mother, I remember that I was so hungry that I stole potato skins to survive.”
Auschwitz survivor Michael Bornstein, right, and two of his granddaughters at a ceremony in Krakow on January 26, 2025, ahead of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. (Zev Stub/Times of Israel)
After Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army, Bornstein and his mother were in a displaced persons camp in Munich before they were eventually brought to live in New York’s Lower East Side. He later married and had four kids. Now, seven of his twelve grandchildren were able to join him on stage and vow to continue to share his legacy.
In 2017, Bornstein published a book of his memoirs entitled The Survivors Club, with a photo on the cover of him as a child in Auschwitz, surrounded by other kids in the camp. Shortly afterward, a woman from his neighborhood contacted him, saying that she was the girl next to him in the picture. That woman, Tova Friedman, has continued to speak about the Holocaust with Bornstein, and got up on the stage with him as he spoke on Sunday.
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